Let’s get right into it.

What is punting?

Punting is a strategy used in category leagues. You cannot punt in a points league since it is based on a cumulative value of multiple statistics.

The essence of punting is to intentionally overlook or ignore a category or categories to boost your own players’ values. This allows you to gain value on your players whose weaknesses are no longer a liability, while allowing you to focus resources on less categories. You are attempting to gain an advantage over teams whose values may be spread thinner across more areas.

Punting is considered more effective for head-to-head category leagues since you only have to beat what is in front of you every week. In roto category leagues, you compete against the entire league in every category and that encourages you to build in a more balanced way.

What does punting do?

Let’s dissect my previous statement.

The essence of punting is to intentionally overlook and ignore a category or categories to bolster value in other areas.

If I remove the points category from my draft board, the value of players changes dramatically. Typically, you get a bunch of points at the beginning of drafts, but if you start off with Tyrese Haliburton (20.7 PPG last season) and Domantas Sabonis (19.1 PPG last season), you’d have to hunt some extra points later on to contend with teams who grabbed 25-to-30 PPG scorers like Joel Embiid, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Donovan Mitchell, Trae Young, Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irving to name a few.

Let’s be clear again. You don’t have to punt in that scenario as you can definitely make up the points. Hali gives you a nice start in 3PM, dimes, steals, FT% and was pretty good for a guard with .490 FG% last season. Sabonis was the second-best big for dimes last season and also gives you FG% plus rebounds. You can build on those categories to boost them further and then try to “recover” in  blocks, which are available throughout the draft board based on early 2023-24 ADPs.

If you don’t worry about catching teams in that category, it opens up your flexibility. Since scoring is harder to find later in the draft, those low-scoring players with strong peripherals become more valuable to you. How about a guard/wing who gives you 11.6 PPG but 2.1 threes and 1.5 steals. Or a big whose 10.2 PPG does not matter because you’re getting 10 rebounds, 1.6 blocks and over .600 FG% (those are random numbers but think of De’Anthony Melton or Jakob Poeltl). Look at Draymond Green as well. Last season, Green gave you 1.0 steals, 0.8 blocks, 7.2 rebounds and 6.8 assists, but his 8.5 points could be viewed as problematic for some teams. While others may worry that those players bring down their team’s scoring average, you don’t because you don’t care about points.

The other result of punting is a nice buffer or cushion for absences. If things go well, you could absorb an injury to a fairly good mid-round player or two and still be competitive. Early-round players will always be difficult to replace in most cases though. The purpose of punting is to make yourself a lot stronger in fewer categories, so if you dominate four and win another two 80% of the time and a seventh category half of the time, you’re in good business. To emphasize this, if you are getting 37-to-50 blocks per week and you lose Jaren Jackson Jr. (maybe 8-to-18 blocks individually factoring in variance). Let’s say you are facing the second-best blocks team and they get 35-to-45 blocks per week. You could make up maybe half of JJJ’s value by streaming and perhaps be able to sneak a win against them anyway. These are random numbers again, but it should paint the idea well enough.

Punts become more effective if your league has more categories, more teams or anything else which spreads resources thin. Focusing on specific areas could help more in those cases since you have less options to work with.

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